Banshee – Season 1, Episode 9: “Always the Cowboy”

* For a review of the previous episode, “We Shall Live Forever” – click here
* For a review of the Season 1 finale, “A Mixture of Madness” – click here Hood (Antony Starr) rushes to the hospital with Ana a.k.a Carrie Hopewell (Ivana Milicevic). He gets her into the Emergency Room. Saying someone attacked her. The doctors take her inside, but who knows what will happen next. Hood’s left outside, to wait, to hope, to go crazy.
Later Gordon (Rus Blackwell) arrives, pissed off and raging at Hood. The doctor at least has good news, that his wife is stable. She’ll be fine. Meanwhile, Sugar (Frankie Faison) and Job (Hoon Lee) are left to deal with the body of Olek, as well as the place smashed to bits at Hood’s little apartment. I’m worrying about what comes next with Kai (Ulrich Thomsen) and his niece Rebecca (Lili Simmons). He looks at her in a different light, after what happened in the previous episode. He’s seen her naked, and something disgusting has awoken in him. He watches her, not like an uncle should, as she takes off her towel and steps out to the pool in a bathing suit. This is headed to a dark place.
The shit has hit the fan now. Job tries to encourage Hood to leave, run again. But Hood’s intent on something much different. He wants to bring the fight to Mr. Rabbit (Ben Cross). The thought of Olek beating Carrie, the pain she went through, it kills him. You can see through the tough exterior. It destroys him inside to know of her suffering, sitting his apartment amongst blood and glass.
And at the same time, Rabbit himself sits looking at pictures of his daughter, his granddaughter and the family he does not now. Most interesting, he looks at a picture of Hood with the Sheriff’s badge. War is headed for Banshee. In the little town, Carrie wakes up worried about what’s coming for her: “We‘re all in danger,” she yells at her husband. The seriousness of her tone makes Gordon understand how dire the situation is truly. This warrior side of his wife is the first he’s seen. Naturally, it’s a bit of a shock. Well he ain’t seen nothing yet. Hood also starts preparing a drawer filled with guns for when he needs the fire power.

When Carrie goes to get her boy Max at his school, she sees Rabbit. Then Max is gone.
Now with the police involved, from Brock (Matt Servitto) to Siobhan (Trieste Kelly Dunn), things are deeper. She can’t tell them about her gangster father. Everyone is in the dark, except Carrie and Hood.
Then Gordon arrives to get answers. To all the lies she ever told. Out comes the news of her father, alive as opposed to what he was told. The FBI are naturally involved, taking over the investigation. The mess gets bigger.
On the other side of Banshee, bad business is going down. Alex Longshadow (Anthony Ruivivar) finds Kai and his niece at the construction project of the new casino. He doesn’t like that, of course. Except Proctor is the one holding all the power, as in manpower. And as new Chief Alex looks around, alongside his sister Nola Longshadow (Odette Annable), Kai shuts the whole place down with one blow of a whistle. Slowly, Rebecca is starting to see that Kai is ruthless. He tells her the only reason he shut the place down is due to the fact he promised the former chief his son would not die. Chilly.

Rabbit is off hiding, now with young Max in tow. Problem is he doesn’t know about the boy’s condition. Then ole grandpappy starts to figure out his quite grey moral code might have some flaws in it, as far as this latest plan is concerned.
Over at the slaughterhouse, Hood meets Proctor unexpectedly. Asking for a little help. He then finds out Rebecca is Kai’s niece, admitting to having sex with her. This sends the mad uncle into a rage. He and Hood have a nice little tussle. Thing I love about Kai is that for all his high class act he puts on outwardly to make his rotten core a little more easily digested, he can back up his bad ass talk. He can fight. We knew this already, but against Hood he does hold his own damn well. They’re both solid fighters. That’s a great thing about these actors, they’re all able to do these impressive fight sequences, and that gives the show as a whole an interesting quality. So many different matches, for lack of a better word, to combine.
After the whole fight, Hood and Proctor sit bloodied to talk about why Hood went to see him in the first place. He needs help with Rabbit. And that way, he owes Kai a solid. Deal is that Hood has to stay away from Rebecca. Creepy uncle stuff.

Gordon is further confronting new truths about the woman he knows as Carrie Hopewell, his wife. She does love him, yet there are things which need to wait. Shitty for Gordon, whose entire life is basically crumbling in front of his eyes.
In the living room, Rabbit waits with Deva (Ryann Shane) on the couch. Things are getting much too intense. The family is now invaded by their absent grandfather. Gordon takes the lead, though – his military training is good, we just haven’t seen it come out yet. However, Rabbit is a bad motherfucker. When Deva asks him not to hurt her dad, Rabbit replies: “This is not your father.” Bam. God damn. Everything has burned down around Carrie, a.k.a Anastasia. A surreal moment while Gordon hears Carrie talk Ukranian to her father, completely baffled with this sudden change in his wife. So many secrets buried for far too long.

Up in the casino, Alex has a man in debt in his office, as Nola lingers in the background. Well the big boss man in charge now is trying to collect on the big outstanding money. Seems this fella has a lot of debts in a lot of places. This man worked for Proctor one time, though he was fired. Looks like Alex has some greasy plans afoot.
Back with Hood, he comes across Rabbit who only tries exacerbating the festering old wounds between them. Then with an ominous warning, Mr. Rabbit heads out. Leaving Hood to face the clicks of gun hammers in the background, cocking of rifles.
“Oh shit,” he says and ducks. Right as the credits roll.
After the credits, we see Nola Longshadow sharpening a tomahawk before tossing it viciously into a nearby wall. Bad. Ass. Next up is the Season 1 finale, “A Mixture of Madness”, which brings lots of the titular madness, some blood, and plenty of wild action. As usual.

An Update from Father Gore

Seek & Ye Shall Find

Father Gore is first and foremost a passionate lover of film— especially horror. He's also a Master's student at Memorial University of Newfoundland with a concentration in postmodern critical theory, currently writing a thesis which will be his debut novel of literary fiction, titled Silence. He also used to write for Film Inquiry frequently during 2016-17 and is currently contributing to Scriptophobic in a column called Serial Killer Celluloid focusing on film adaptations about real life murderers. As of September 2018, Father Gore is an official member of the Online Film Critics Society.